Memeorandum

June 20, 2010

On The Border

[UPDATE: A much more detailed response to Mr. Fox is here. Briefly, my point is that statistics offered by the NY Times do not support the claims they made; Mr. Fox's rebuttal is that the Times was wrong, but if I had looked at it differently I would have seen that the Times was still wrong, so therefore I am wrong. Yeah, I found him to be confusing, too.]

The NY Times pushes to the border of statistical incoherence and tells us that in Arizona, crime is down even if the perception of crime is up:

It is a connection that those who support stronger enforcement of immigration
laws and tighter borders often make: rising crime at the border
necessitates tougher enforcement.

But the rate of violent crime at the border, and indeed across Arizona,
has been declining, according to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, as has illegal immigration, according to the Border
Patrol. While thousands have been killed in Mexico’s drug wars,
raising anxiety that the violence will spread to the United States, F.B.I. statistics show that Arizona is relatively
safe.

That Mr. Krentz’s death nevertheless churned the emotionally charged
immigration debate points to a fundamental truth: perception often
trumps reality, sometimes affecting laws and society in the process.

Interesting. I would have hoped that Arizonans had a better grip on the reality in their own state than some NY Times reporter. Let's cut to the stats:

For instance, statistics show that even as Arizona’s population swelled,
buoyed in part by illegal immigrants funneling across the border,
violent crime rates declined, to 447 incidents per 100,000 residents in
2008, the most recent year for which comprehensive data is available
from the F.B.I. In 2000, the rate was 532 incidents per 100,000.

Nationally, the crime rate declined to 455 incidents per 100,000 people,
from 507 in 2000.

What we see that Arizona is broken into three categories - Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Cities Outside of MSA, and rural counties. Most people reside and most crime occurs in the MSAs. On the other hand, a glance at a map tells me that the Arizona border itself is not near what to the eyes of this former Manhattanite looks like any major city.

And the stats reprinted below tell a different story - measured by violent crimes per 100,000, the non-MSA portion of Arizona has seen a dramatic increase in crime.

We also note that the non-MSA population has been declining while the state has been growing. Maybe what were once exurbs are now suburbs incorporated into growing cities, which certainly muddies any comparisons across eight years.

But whatever the explanation, these numbers do not support the case that the rural and border areas of Arizona are getting safer. Quite the contrary, actually. Maybe the Times can turn a reporter loose on that.

Comments

Ah, statistics. When you have lost the argument based on reality and perception you can always argue stats. Its the same in law. When you have the facts you argue that, when you don't you argue the law.

Pretty soon least squares and regression analysis will replace the number of morgues with no vacancy signs.

It's tough to pin down any meaningful stats or trends anywhere in AZ because of the patchwork of morons versus conservatives who get things done. Maricopa County has hardnosed Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and an equally hardnosed county attorney Andrew Thomas who have reduced crime in Maricopa County by 18 to 30% depending on the source of the analysis. Within Maricopa County, we have Phoenix Mayor Gordon who actively sides with the boycotters, and the Chandler mayor who created a "sanctuary city". Then you also have the miserable lying media on the side of the boycotters. Pima County has a barking moonbat for a Sheriff, but then Pinal County has another hardnosed Sheriff Babeau - but his county is overrun by illegals in the main travel corridor that Pima county ignores. That is the county just south of me where they won't let SAR stay out in the field overnight. Heck - many of my callouts start after dark. In fact, had a swiftwater callout Friday morning at 1:30 AM, 125 miles south where my county borders Pinal County. Tough to carry in a wetsuit.

Since it's fathers day - helped to rescue a dad and three kids in the swiftwater incident, then a fathers son late last night in a rappelling accident 60 miles north at the bottom of an incredibly beautiful, but very remote canyon (West Clear Creek).

On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”
[Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”

((Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words,they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”))

funny ain't it ... when Bush was trying for comprehensive immigration reform the Dems had kittens about it .. there was some real solidarity between the two sides on that issue ... but now that Owebama's president they're all for it? their hyporcrisy reeks

It is easy to reduce crime if you place all high crime areas off limits as the Fish and Wildlife Service did in 2006 when they closed approximately 3500 acres of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona.

On June 18, 2010, Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl told the audience at a North Tempe Tea Party town hall meeting that during a private, one-on-one meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office, the President told him, regarding securing the southern border with Mexico, “The problem is, . . . if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’” [Audible gasps were heard throughout the audience.] Sen. Kyl continued, “In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with ‘comprehensive immigration reform.’”

1. The NYT reporter has been on my radar since Nov. 2006 at the latest, but this post and the comments don't even mention his name. This post has no suggestion to others along the lines of contacting the NYT's public editor. That's not going to cause them to change.

2. Someone suggests above asking Obama. Who exactly is doing that? I tried but was unable to ask him a question about the wider topic over three years ago, and since that time I've encouraged others to go ask him real questions. I've gotten almost no help with that.

Solving these problems really isn't all that difficult; the problem is that few are willing to put the effort into doing things in smart, effective ways.

So 76 more crimes in a non-MSA in the midst of increased enforcement, while over 1,000 crime drop in the cities and you are calling out the NYTs for bogus representation? How are more people in Arizona supposed to have a better grip on reality with fewer people where the crime is? Nice try.

76 more crimes in a non-MSA in the midst of increased enforcement, while over 1,000 crime drop in the cities

Hi, stephen. You appear to be as illiterate as you are innumerate and obnoxious. Please run for office. The country would benefit from having more Democrats who are as open as you are in your contempt for your fellow citizens.

I live in Arizona. The problems allegedly caused by illegals is highly exaggerated by Republicans into making people vote for them. Me and the people inside my gated community talk about the issue all the time, and none of us are afraid of our gardener, maid, or pool guy.

Perhaps the NYTimes should rehire fired reporter Jayson Blair. He used to be able to sit in his New York Office and teleport himself around the country so as to write on location stories about Jessica Lynch in West Virginia. Surely he could do the same for the peaceful Arizona Border.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned suppression of reporting so as to procure a bigger slice of Federal pie. It happens in Chicago all the time. That high murder rate, nah, it's filed under domestic disputes. Gang violence, you ask? Never happens. It's the fault of all dem crazy gun shop owners.

bdgates.. the numbers from the NMSA and OMSA are still quite small. Any jump in crime enforcement will create the skewed stats Tom is citing. Only 4% of the population live in a NMSA and 3% live in a OMSA. You agree that a drop in crime experienced by 93 percent of the state population is anywhere near having a grip on reality? My only contempt is for those who misrepresent the truth, and those who willfully ignore it.

Having heard the Mayor of Phoenix speak shortly after the passage of the Arizona law and give a set of incomprehensible and elliptical arguments for his case, and then hearing Sheriff Arpaio speak in person and cogently argue his case, my money is on Arpaio.

depending upon the jurisdiction, all sorts of statistical games go on.The City of Los Angeles is one such jurisdiction. Selective enforcement is a regular occurrence, and the ACLU and MecHA and the rest of them are a cottage industry litigating on behalf of highly spurious claims.

Undocumented workers do not congregate in border or rural areas. They have little choice but to live and work in cities, where the jobs and housing are and where they can more easily blend into a community. The numerical increase is quite small per 100,000 especially considering the decline in population (the latter of which demonstrates that undocumented workers are not locating there). I would suspect the increase is related to the proliferation of meth labs owned and operated by legal citizens, but that's just a guess.
More important, if anti-Mexicans weren't so paranoid, they'd have accepted the statistical facts as they are and made the far simpler argument as to why the lower overall rate hasn't cut the perception of crime. That would be due to the nature of Mexican drug-gang related crime: highly sensational and gruesome. People see what's going on in Mexico and any hint that it could be starting up here is legitimately mortifying, even if, overall, crime is down.

If a person can wade through the first half of Fareed's Sunday GPS--there is a great interview of China's wealthiest woman Zhang Xin. Actually, she's a billionaire and at the age of fourteen worked in a shoe factory.
She offer's insight into doing business in China--she's in real estate there--and also the US where she believes our "business lights" are dimming.
Very attractive and articulate woman.

It is a connection that those who support stronger enforcement of immigration laws and tighter borders often make: rising crime at the border necessitates tougher enforcement.

But the rate of violent crime at the border, and indeed across Arizona, has been declining, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation...

The Times clearly distinguishes between rising crime at "the border" and "across Arizona". Do the statistics to which the Times refer support their conclusion?

Crime has been falling in big cities across America, which is great, but if (IF!) these rural Arizona stats can be compared over time, the trend is in the opposite direction and they are headed back to the Wild West. Is that what the Times reported?

Now, if the Times had reported something like "border crime is rising in Arizona but nobody lives there, and on net crime in the state is down", that would be accurate. But that is not at all what they said.

John, as the data indicate, population is declining in rural Arizona. That alone makes it very hard to believe the influx of immigration is taking place outside cities. And as for the NYT assertion that crime is down, ``at" the border, Tom seems to be correct that the cited figures don't show that, but that's probably because they compare 2001 and 2008. If we look at stats on Nogales, which is both a city and right on the border, with a declining population of about 200,000 (more than half the state's entire rural population), we can see that crime is both below the nationwide average and has declined from the peak in 2005-2006. http://www.idcide.com/citydata/az/nogales.htm

And if crime, rather than keeping non-Anglo potential voters out of the country, is your concern, be sure to look into the methamphetamine crisis. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out how devastating SB1070 will be to law enforcement efforts to contain the meth crisis, which, by some measures, accounts for more than half of all serious crime in the state. Busting up drug distribution networks is especially difficult for methamphetamine, since it can be manufactured in a small space using somewhat readily available raw materials. At the same time, ordinary citizens are horrified by the effects methamphetamine addiction has on those within and without their own communities. They are often prepared to help law enforcement by providing information. Yet thanks to SB1070, law enforcement personnel will no longer be able to obtain such information in very many cases without risking losing their jobs by declining to verify the immigration paperwork of informants. Marginalized communities like undocumented workers are often the most exposed to drug networks and in the best position and most motivated to provide accurate intelligence to law enforcement. But how many undocumented workers are going to risk their own deportation by providing that kind of information, in particular when their testimony is required to obtain warrants or convict defendants…

1. Is it that crime has been declining or that reported crime has been declining? In many cities the police won't even bother to attempt to investigate burglaries to find the perpetrator and they will (off the record) tell you so. They have better things to do like ticket people who aren't wearing their seat belts. That brings in money. Why bother to report crimes when the police aren't interested in making any kind of meaningful response? Its a waste of your time. I've been there, I've done that.

2. A decline in overall crime rate is immaterial. Who is to say that a decline of say 2 per cent would not have been a decline of 6 per cent but not for the presence of the illegal aliens? Evidence would be helpful. No one seems to be very interested in giving us any.

One bit of evidence that might be helpful is the percentage of illegal aliens who make up the prison population in Arizona as opposed to the percentage who compose the general population. I don't know about Arizona but my understanding is that in California the proportion of prison inmates who are illegal aliens is far higher than their proportions in the general population.

Any jump in crime enforcement will create the skewed stats Tom is citing. Only 4% of the population live in a NMSA and 3% live in a OMSA. You agree that a drop in crime experienced by 93 percent of the state population is anywhere near having a grip on reality?

The problem that you have is that this is crime per 100,000, not just a percentage increase by area. So, it's normalized for low and high population areas.

Jorg opines: ``Surely not paying income tax is no worse than crossing the border illegally.''
How do you figure? Show your math.
And what would you say to a law requiring beat cops to confirm that you weren't in arrears on your taxes and hauling you in, or even deporting you!!, if you were? That would give the Tea Party permanent hemmoroids, wouldn't it??

Without further analysis, you don't know if it is or not. As was explained elsewhere, it could very will just be cities eating Suburbs. If this is the case, you are folding the relatively low crime suburbs, into the relatively higher crime inner cities, so, you would expect the Urban stats to get better. At the same time, you have the stats in the rural areas, which just lost the Suburbs, getting measurably much worse. Which means a)it's worse than we thought and b) most of the stats on Urban crime the last 10 years may very well be meaningless.

Steph: Nogales is on the border, not rural. I specifically contrasted it with rural Arizona by noting its population is half the total rural. Maybe you misunderstood. Read it again, more carefully this time.

``virulent anti-Semitism"? I have nothing but the greatest respect for Judaism. As a cultural tradition especially, it fosters reverence for scholarship and, for the most part, fair-mindedness: to aspects upon which our fate as a free society largely depends. But the proof, really, is in the pudding: Freud, Marx, Einstein: all Jews and all did more to expand the horizons of knowledge in their fields globally than have any other trio you can name, period. And the Jewish contribution to many fields from the fine arts to law is vast and undeniable and truly remarkable when you consider the numbers. Go to any major city in the West and look into philanthropy and you'll find Jews engaged in it in numbers far beyond their proportion of the population, even if you adjust for income. Same at top universities and in law: the success of Jews surpasses their proportion of the population substantially. I'm the very opposite of an anti-Semite and I have never uttered a single word in speech or writing that could lead anyone to think any different.

So you use Nogales to support the "upward trend" of crime in "low population" areas "were the number of residents is declining" and that's what you wanted to cite cause it is "on the border and its population is 1/2 of the total rural count."

Tom, you are assuming all of the cities outside metropolitan statistical area and non-metropolitan counties are on the border? Are they even exclusive entities? Perhaps the NYT is making an error in how they reach their conclusion, but 93% of the population is experiencing a decline in crime, its likely border towns are too. I don't know from these numbers, but neither do you, and the overall numbers suggest you are wrong in trying to conflate such small rise in raw crime stats with some "grip on reality" anti-immigrant Arizona's have that others don't by looking at the same data.

Jorg, any Mexican national can cross the border at will with a border crossing card. They can stay 90 days(I believe its 90 days) and then go back. Many have citizen family here and go back and forth. When times go rough back in MExico a cousin or uncle, etc. may give them a job or the Mexican national may have contacts here where he can work and send money back. So coming here is not a crime, it requires the transaction of employment and/or overstaying their 90 days to be out of status. This is not a crime, like murder. It is a civil violation, like jaywalking or speeding. The feds have mysteriously prioritized their focus on violent crime, such as drug running, illegal gun running, human trafficking, etc. and don't spend as much resources on the folks with families working, paying into social security and medicare, etc. ICE has a 6 billion dollar budget and while that may seem like a lot, it isn't unlimited.

Po: read again, and take more care. The per 100,000 rate is down significantly. it's only up in low-population were the number of residents is declining. That was Steph's point about enforcement...

By what little information we have.

Total NUMBERS of violent crimes are UP by about 2000 per year. BUT, the Urban population outgrew the crime increase(supposedly) which dropped the per/100k number. Between 2000 and 2008 there was this housing boom thingy. It would be interesting to see the causes of growth and the demographic makeup.

Violent crime in MSA's is down slightly, but UP sharply per/100k.

Violent crime in rural areas is also UP, both by number, and per/100k.

You can try to spin it, but, the result is, there's more crime today than there was in 2000, and there's much more outside of the high population areas.

Po writes: ``Violent crime in MSA's is down slightly, but UP sharply per/100k.''
But the stats show clearly crime is DOWN 20 percent on a "per 100,000" basis in MSAs. There were 564 in 2000 and 450 in 2008. That's DOWN, not up, Po. Read it again, this time more carefully.

"on the folks with families working, paying into social security and medicare, etc."

If they are doing that, "the transaction of employment outlawed on a 90 day status" as you called it seems to have been violated, no? Or are these the under the table, out in front of Home Depot guys, that the government should rightly be targeting for deportation?

So which are you advocating for: the out of status employment transacting ones or the out of status working without paying into the system ones?

I'd be willing to bet that their "cousin or uncle, etc" with "contacts here where they can work and send money back" isn't "transacting employment" on them by reporting SS, medicare, etc. either, so they are "undocumented" and hence illegal. And these guys are the drain on the hospitals and schools for which many a state is going broke.

They are either in compliance or out.

I almost found myself in a mexican jail once for traveling to Juarez with my laptop in the trunk; because, I didn't apply for and receive a work visa for the trip over the border and I had a work laptop in the trunk... that I landed on a Sunday and went straight to Juarez to visit the market like a good tourist with my bags in my trunk before going to the hotel was my mistake since they caught it on my way back into the US. I finally convinced them that I would do their paperwork the next morning on the trip like I was supposed to on my way to the factory (and always did in the past), and they allowed me to cross back into the USA only because they were able to verify our factory was closed that day. I shudder to think what the cost of going from plane to rental car to straw market without dropping off my laptop at the hotel first almost cost...

I was technically out of compliance and learned a very big lesson that day... the Mexican customs agents don't take kindly to violations of their work/travel requirements... why should we?

Nogales, Mexico which is south of the border has a population over 10 times that of Nogales, AZ.

Many of the AZ border cities economies are helped by the fact that Mexicans can cross the border and shop in AZ. This is legal. Many live on one side of the border and work on the other side. This includes border patrol and customs officials, but it is against their departments policy.

AZ Supt. of Schools is working to put a stop of Mexican school children crossing the border and going to AZ schools. Their parents pay no AZ taxes but the schools were getting money per student from the state. The schools were providing buses to and from the border for the Mexican students.

bunkerbuster, that is the craziest thing I've ever read. Freud is almost totally discredited in the psychology community (http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/05/menand_on_psych.html), Marx was intensely anti-semitic (http://volokh.com/posts/1129867546.shtml) and raised as a Christian in a Christian culture by a converted Jewish father and mother that may not have been Jewish at all (not to mention being wrong about almost everything in his own field), and the statement that I cannot rebut with "Darwin, Newton, and Adam Smith" is crazy. I'm not trying to run down Jews and the valuable contribution many Jews have made to Western civilization, in particular, but that's the weirdest thing I've read in a while.

Good points, Jonathan. I should have said in the 20th Century. While Marx was obviously earlier, his impact was broadest in the 20th century. Freud is now discredited and I'm pretty sure Einstein will eventually be, but no one can close the doors they opened. Same for Marx. While his theories were ultimately shown to be flawed, he expanded the horizons of knowledge and understanding greatly. As for his parentage, it's rather mixed, as you suggest: from Josh McDowell's book on Secular Religion: ``His ancestors, Jewish on both his mother's and father's sides, were rabbis. His father, Heinrich, had converted to Protestantism in 1816 or 1817 in order to continue practicing law after the Prussian edict denying Jews to the bar. Karl was born in 1818 and baptized in 1824, but his mother, Henriette, did not convert until 1825, when Karl was 7. While the family did not appear religious at all -- it was said that not a single volume on religion or theology was in Heinrich's modest library -- Karl was raised in an atmosphere of religious toleration. There was some discrimination against Jews in the area, but general religious tolerance was the standard. Karl was sent to religious school primarily for academic rather than religious training. On the whole, the family was not committed to either evangelical Protestantism or evangelical Judaism.''

Stephen, just think of the money we could save by simply not enforcing all those tax laws. The IRS could be by on a budget that would just need to be a bookkeeping service, depositing all those payments that are sure to roll in even though no one gets punished for not paying. And accountants and bookkeeper and tax consultants and lawyers wouldn't need to be paid by any of us.

In other words, it would have pretty much the effect not trying to find or punish those who break the laws about crossing the border [you do remember all those videos and pics of people not bothering to get a 90-day pass, right?] illegally, nor staying in the country too long, nor working illegally [and probably not paying any taxes or SS or whatever if it's for cash], and getting services paid by tax dollars paid by more law-abiding types.

In other words, you're 'profiling' and letting one set of criminals break the law with impunity.

Nice work, I suppose, for some.

And, BB, you innumerate steaming pile, I was pointing out that breaking the law is breaking the law, or should be. Personally, I don't care how much it costs or doesn't cost. I care whether or not laws are enforced equally, a concept that you evidently don't understand any better than you do data.

Freud is now discredited and I'm pretty sure Einstein will eventually be, but no one can close the doors they opened. Same for Marx. While his theories were ultimately shown to be flawed, he expanded the horizons of knowledge and understanding greatly.

Total nonsense. There's a huge difference between someone's path-breaking work being superseded by subsequent work (that would never have been possible without the earlier advances) versus someone who just was dead wrong and wasted countless lives of followers going down the same wrong path (not to mention the millions of violent deaths at the hands of his adherents). The former describes Freud, and may someday describe Einstein. The latter describes Marx.

Po, the state is paid by the feds on a per head basis. So, for every seat that is occupied, the state reaps the rewards from the federal coffers. That the seats are filled with illegals is just an inconvenient truth.

And now that the state board of ed is getting x+ dollars from the feds and budgeting based on same, they have incentive to keep the money flowing at x+ dollars, which means they have little incentive to reduce the number of butts in the seats, so they have been corrupted to the wrong side of the immigration debate.

From Wikipedia
The federal government supplies around 8.5% of the public school system funds, according to a 2005 report by the National Center for Education Statistics. The remaining split between state and local governments averages 48.7 percent from states and 42.8 percent from local sources. However, the division varies widely. In Hawaii local funds make up only 1.7 percent, while state sources account for nearly 90.1 percent.[97]

If Einstein is ever discredited, it will only be by scientific proof that can be tested and verified by unbiased observers. To "discredit" Freud or Marx requires only that one draw different conclusions after observing the same events that they observe.

I'd be interested to hear just what Einstein had to say that anyone now feels is likely to be discredited.

If AZ is anything like TX, the property tax money is funneled into a big pot and then is divided out and redistributed by the state per student, per day of school attended. The media refers to it as the "Robin Hood" scheme. It sucks.

But anyway, in TX it matters not if your illegal parents pay no taxes - you, by attending a public school, bring your "share" of Robin Hood money to the school, via the state, courtesy of property tax payers.

Po & Stephanie,
AZ taxes are the primary funding for many schools in AZ. The local school system is the one that encouraged the Mexican's to send their students to the schools near the border. More students mean more teacher and high pay for the administrators.

State wants to pay for AZ residents only. US Court decision require states to pay for illegal immigrents schooling but these students were living in Mexico and commuting. Would NY city let students from NJ go to NY city schools (without paying).

It's not just the per pupil butt in seat. Then they get to add in school breakfast for poor, school lunches for poor. And those come from Feds. How much money coming from the feds is the cutoff point for when the state/local board start looking at $$ not at education and that the parents/taxholders should get concerned? Do you think those local school systems that are getting any $$ are willing to part with any of it? Regardless of whether it is due to illegals or not?

Camel. Tent. Nose.

And in Georgia, you can't go to another in state school system other than where you reside supposedly without paying out of county tuition. Happens all the time, though. Students of teachers have some exceptions made to accomodate for commuting, but the schools have lots of athletes of dubious residency as well as lots of ethnics looking to get their kids into the better schools. Primarily the Asians. The AA students already get to majority to minority move as they please within county.

It's not just the per pupil butt in seat. Then they get to add in school breakfast for poor, school lunches for poor.

Stephanie, you ain't paying attention. So, let's say that the school district gets Federal money for lunches for Illegals. Awesome. They still have to pay the other 90% of the cost to educate that pupil. It's a huge LOSER. If school districts are that dumb, then I suppose they deserve what they get.

I think Freud's theory of the ego, superego, and id is valid. The interpretation of dreams except in egregious cases would seem to be on shakier ground.

In so many cases, the brilliance of separate components is exacerbated by other, disprovable assumptions. ASs an example, Marx is great at analyzing certain prevailing conditions of the time and of certain logical natural reactions to those conditions, but then his theory was blown all to hell by the facts.

Jorg opines: ``breaking the law is breaking the law, or should be. Personally, I don't care how much it costs or doesn't cost. I care whether or not laws are enforced equally.''
Then you're opposed to SB1070, which singles out a paperwork crime for intensive enforcement, to the exclusion of other paperwork crimes such as late or missed tax payments.

Again, Jorg: would you support a law that required police to confirm up-to-date tax payments by anyone they have "lawful contact" with? If not, why not, given your claim to support equal enforcement, regardless...?

I think you will find, at the local level, yes, they are that stupid. The entire structure is set up to reward the end user school systems for demanding as much of the pie as they can. The state suffers, the feds just keep pumping in the dough for each additional butt in the seat which is passed through. The state is caught in the middle.

I find myself in agreement with Matt's take on Marx. And it's funny that some here can't grasp that someone, like Marx, could dramatically expand the horizons of knowledge and still be wrong or see his knowledge used to rationalize the worst behavior.

Bunkerbuster, you are not nearly as smart or informed as you seem to think you are. You've made so many tendentious comments it's hard to know where to begin. Let me respond to your question for Jorg about income taxes.

Your question mischaracterizes the nature of SB1070. Under that law, the police are not required to question someone about their immigration status unless they have reasonable suspicion that they are here illegally and it is practicable to do so. I would have no problem at all with police questioning someone about paying their income taxes, if in the course of their lawful contact they developed reasonable suspicion that his income taxes are not paid. But the fact is that it is highly unlikely that the police would be have reasonable suspicion about a person's tax status from a brief contact. Furthermore, I don't see how it would be unconstitutional for a state to pass such a law. This hypothetical income tax law would probably be an overreaction though, because there is no crisis of tens of millions of people not paying their income taxes, and an effective system already exists to deal with the ones who don't. If however our country had an epidemic of income tax dodgers, and a federal government not only failing to enforce the income tax laws, but wilfully and deliberately encouraging this illegal behavior, then I feel it would be quite appropriate for concerned states--who after all would be missing some of their revenue due to the failure of the federal government--to pass law indicating to police departments that when reasonable suspicion exists, then go ahead and lob the simple question, "Are you paid up on your income taxes?"

Contrast that with a lawful contact in a border state during which the police officer asks the person to produce identification documents (federal law requires all immigrants to have such on their person at all times). If those documents are not forthcoming, and if for example the person cannot answer certain basic questions about where they live or work, then a pattern starts to develop. At this point, reasonable suspicion might very well exist. And as much as you and your allies want to analogize this into some horrific situation, most reasonable people can agree that just because the law might effectively ferret out illegals does not make it cruel or unfair.

The smaller political subtext of "safer border counties" is based upon support of Gabrielle Gifford (Code Stinko NOW cow) in AZ-08. The "safer" aspect is derived from a peculiar anomaly in the number of reported assaults recorded by the Tucson PD.

The larger political context is to make AZ a swing state in '12 but the President's assault on capitalism makes that a bit improbable.

Shifting "aggravated assault" to "simple assault" (or vice versa) is the easiest way to manipulate violent crime numbers. Murder numbers tend to be a more accurate reflection of reality but there are major end point problems due to the size of the data set for a relatively small population. There were 74 murders in 2007 in Pima County - down substantially from the 92 murders reported in 2000 but up substantially from the 53 murders reported in 2001.

I wouldn't accept the numbers reported in the border counties as dispositive regarding the impact of illegals on violent crime in either direction any more than I accept the Pew generated numbers regarding the total numbers of illegals in the country. The "statistical" element of the argument is a farce wrapped in a chimera in both situations.

"b" writes: `` This hypothetical income tax law would probably be an overreaction though, because there is no crisis of tens of millions of people not paying their income taxes.''
Absolutely. Correct. And thanks for providing more support for my argument that SB1070 is not simply about enforcing the law -- it's about selective enforcement in response to a perceived ``crisis.'' As Tom himself has shown, crime rates are down in Arizona, and there certainly are not "tens of millions" of undocumented workers in Arizona. Not even close! Thanks, "b"! You've made it even more obvious why it's silly to claim that SB1070 is simply a matter of enforcing existing laws but is rather, a specifically targeted enforcement that is an overreaction in the absence of a "crisis."